NVIDIA has announced its support for a new wireless display technology called Miracast. The creation of the Wi-Fi Alliance and its partners, Miracast is a wireless technology that allows direct connections (sans router) between a Wi-Fi enabled device and a Wi-Fi enabled television set. It is a much more open standard than the proprietary technologies like Intel’s WiDi. Devices will require certification much like other Wi-Fi routers and wireless adapters. The Miracast standard certification program is set to launch soon with the standard’s specifications published sometime in August. Any device manufacturer will be able to use the standard and go through certification, though whether or not we will see the high adoption rate that many are hoping for remains to be seen.

Interestingly, it looks as though NVIDIA is going to be one of the first adopters of the Miracast standard by integrating it into its Tegra 3-powered mobile devices. Using the Tegra 3 “4+1”-core System on a Chip, NVIDIA plans to use the chip to encode the audio and video information and pass it to the Wi-Fi stack where it is passed, via Wi-Fi, to the wireless display. The company wants you to be able to use its mobile tablets and smartphones as a controller to be able to play media and even games on the big screen. According to a recent blog post, NVIDIA is “actively working with our OEM partners and Miracast receiver vendors to bring this technology to market.” The company has further promised more specific updates once the Wi-Fi Alliance finalizes the specification.

Miracast sounds good, as an open wireless display standard, but it is going to face some stiff competition from proprietary technologies. Apple’s Air Play, AMD's Wireless Display, Intel’s WiDi, and software like Android Transporter are all currently in use, and it is unlikely that those companies will forego the invested technology for an open standard. Miracast can certainly still work as a standard for all other devices, but that raises some questions. Mainly, whether or not a number of alternative devices using Miracast will be a large enough interest to compel display makers to support it. Hence my surprise when NVIDIA pledged its support, as it has the potential to be a big player in helping Miracast succeed. I'll remain skeptically optimistic on this one, but I'm curious what you think. Do you think that it will be successful as a wireless display standard?